Wednesday, July 28, 2021 The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has confirmed that the “discovery rule” is only a narrow exception to the statute of limitations, but the court has hinted that changes might be coming that would toll the running of the statute of limitations against a particular defendant until the plaintiff knows she has been injured and has a cause of action against that particular defendant. In Rice v. Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, No. 3 WAP 2020 (July 21, 2021), the Court considered a claim by a woman that, as a girl, she was abused by a priest. She filed a claim against the diocese decades later and, among other things, asserted that the statute of limitations did not bar her claim because she only discovered the diocese’s (alleged) role when she read a 2016 grand jury report that alleged that the diocese was responsible for the misconduct of certain priests. She argued that, under the discovery rule, the limitations period did not begin to run until she saw the grand jury report and learned that the diocese allegedly had some responsibility for clergy abuse. The trial court disagreed and dismissed her case as time barred based on two, decades old Superior Court decisions. On appeal, the Superior Court reversed and held that, under the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision in